Graham Masterton

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Graham Masterton at Salon du livre 2008 (Paris, France) Graham Masterton 20080316 Salon du livre 1.jpg
Graham Masterton at Salon du livre 2008 (Paris, France)

Graham Masterton (born 16 January 1946, in Edinburgh) is a British author known primarily for horror fiction. Originally editor of Mayfair and the British edition of Penthouse , his debut novel, The Manitou, was published in 1976. This novel was adapted in 1978 for the film The Manitou . His 1978 novel Charnel House and 1983 novel Tengu garnered positive critical reception, the former receiving a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America and the latter being awarded with a silver medal by the West Coast Review of Books. Masterton was also the editor of Scare Care, a horror anthology published for the benefit of abused children in Europe and the United States.

Contents

Masterton's novels often contain visceral sex and horror. In addition to his novels, Masterton has written a number of sex instruction books, including How To Drive Your Man Wild in Bed and Wild Sex for New Lovers.

In 2002, Masterton wrote the crime novel A Terrible Beauty, featuring the character Katie Maguire, an Irish detective. The novel was republished in 2013 under the title White Bones, and spawned a number of other novels by Masterton featuring the Maguire character. In 2010, Masterton published Rules of Duel, a short novel that he co-wrote with William S. Burroughs in the early 1970s.

Career

A bronze statue depicting Masterton as a dwarf with a copy of his novel The Manitou, in Wroclaw, Poland DWARF IN STREET.jpg
A bronze statue depicting Masterton as a dwarf with a copy of his novel The Manitou, in Wrocław, Poland

Masterton is a former editor of Mayfair and the British edition of Penthouse . His first novel, The Manitou, was published in 1976, and adapted in 1978 for the film The Manitou . Further works garnered critical acclaim, including a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America for Charnel House and a silver medal by the West Coast Review of Books for Tengu. He is also the only non-French winner of the prestigious Prix Julia Verlanger for his novel Family Portrait, a reworking of the Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Gray . Masterton was also the editor of Scare Care, a horror anthology published for the benefit of abused children in Europe and the U.S.

In 2002, while living with his wife in Cork, Ireland, Masterton added crime fiction to his repertoire with A Terrible Beauty featuring Irish Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire. This was republished in 2013 as White Bones and sold 100,000 ebook copies in a month. It is to be followed by further Katie Maguire adventures, Broken Angels (2013), Red Light (2014), "Taken For Dead" (2014), "Blood Sisters" (2015), "Buried" (2015), Living Death" (2016), "Dead Girls Dancing" (2016) and "Dead Men Whistling" (2018). In 2010, Masterton published Rules of Duel, a short novel from the early 1970s that he wrote in collaboration with William S. Burroughs (Burroughs has co-author credit).

In 2017, after a visit to Wolow, the maximum-security prison near Wrocław in southern Poland, Masterton set up the Graham Masterton Written in Prison Award (Nagroda Grahama Mastertona W Wiezieniu Pisane) for the inmates of all of Poland's penal institutions to enter a short story contest. The contest is now an annual event and is supported by the Polish Prison Service, the Wrocław Agglomeration for Culture and Sport, both Rebis and Albatros publishing houses and the Wrocław Library.

The Prix Graham Masterton is organized annually in Belgium by the publisher Marc Bailly for the best French horror novel and short story of the year. The first prize is a sculpture of a demon.

In 2019, Masterton was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Horror Writers' Association. In 2021, he was honoured by the city of Wrocław in Poland by having a bronze dwarf representing himself with a copy of his horror novel The Manitou placed on the pavement outside the Art Hotel on Kielbasnicza Street—one of nearly 600 dwarves which are a major tourist attraction.

Masterton is co-authoring short horror stories with Dawn G Harris and these have appeared in a collection "Days Of Utter Dread". He is also writing short horror stories based on Slavic mythology with a Polish psychologist Karolina Mogielska and the first of these "Mr Nobody" was published in "Phantasmagoria magazine 22."

Masterton won the Zloty Kosciej Award for the best horror novel of 2023 "Szpital Filomeny" ("The House at Phantom Park").

Personal life

Masterton lives in Surrey, England. His wife and agent Wiescka died on 27 April 2011, aged 65.

Bibliography

Horror

The Manitou/Harry Erskine series

  1. The Manitou , 1976
  2. The Djinn, 1977
  3. Revenge of the Manitou, 1979
  4. Burial, 1991
  5. "Spirit Jump" (short story in Faces of Fear), 1996
  6. Manitou Blood, 2005
  7. Blind Panic, 2009
  8. Plague of the Manitou, 2015

Night Warriors series

  1. Night Warriors , 1987
  2. Death Dream, 1988
  3. Night Plague, 1991
  4. Night Wars, 2006
  5. The Ninth Nightmare, 2011

Rook series

  1. Rook, 1997
  2. Tooth and Claw, 1997
  3. The Terror, 1998
  4. Snowman, 1999
  5. Swimmer, 2001
  6. Darkroom, 2004
  7. Demon's Door, 2010
  8. Garden of Evil, 2012

Sissy Sawyer series

  1. Touchy and Feely (also published as Ill Fortune, loosely based on the Beltway snipers), 2005
  2. The Painted Man (also published as Death Mask), 2008
  3. The Red Hotel, 2012

Nathan Underhill series

  1. Basilisk, 2009
  2. Petrified, 2011

Katie Maguire series

  • 1. White Bones (also published as Katie Maguire and A Terrible Beauty), 2003
  • 2. Broken Angels (also published as Voice of an Angel), 2012
  • 3. Red Light, 2014
  • 4. Taken for Dead, 2014
  • 5. Blood Sisters, 2015
  • 5.5 "Eye for an Eye" (short story), 2015
  • 6. Buried, 2016
  • 7. Living Death, 2016
  • 7.5 "The Drowned" (short story), 2016
  • 8. Dead Girls Dancing, 2016
  • 9. Dead Men Whistling, 2018
  • 10. Begging to Die, 2019
  • 11. The Last Drop of Blood, 2020

Patel & Pardoe Series

  • Ghost Virus, 2018
  • The Children God Forgot, 2021
  • The Shadow People, 2022
  • What Hides in the Cellar, 2023

Historical fiction

Thrillers

Confessions series

Movie tie-ins

...of Fear - short story collections

Short stories

Sex instruction books

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References

  1. "Fiction Book Review: Prey by Graham Masterton". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 13 December 2015.